


A sense of totality

by MorteMistrata



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: M/M, after season 3, is a clone or nah?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-12
Updated: 2017-08-12
Packaged: 2018-12-14 11:27:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11782182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MorteMistrata/pseuds/MorteMistrata
Summary: Keith notices that something is...off about Shiro. He isn't sure if he cares.





	A sense of totality

It’s not any of the Paladins that finds Shiro. It’s his lion, Shiro’s lion that leads Keith to him. Out there in a Galra ship, almost dead of dehydration and aphysication and of sepsis in a leg wound. If Keith had been just a smidge late, Shiro wouldn’t even be around to be rescued. It would be a funeral march instead.

When Keith lugs him into his lion, he’s delirious almost. But still he manages to speak, a single word repeating on his breath as he tries to get an oxygen mask on him.

“Kuron. Kuron. Kuron. Kuron.” The ‘n’ drops off as he latches the mask around his head. “Kuro,” He says, as a gush of fresh air gushes into the tube.

“Kuro?” Keith repeats, his brows furrowed in confusion. Shiro doesn’t reply.

By the time that they reach the castle, Coran’s got a healing pod readied, and all of the crew waiting in the launch bay. While Allura and Hunk linger back respectfully, Lance immediately runs up to the pair as Pidge trails behind, the shine of her glasses hiding the gleam of tears in her eyes.

Keith ignores them, ignores their questions and imploring gazes as he and Coran lift him into a stretcher. His hair is long, much too long for the few months he’s been missing, the scruff on his chin strange and unwieldy.

He doesn’t look like Keith’s Shiro.

He shakes the thought away. He is Shiro. He’s real. He’s there.

OoOoO

When he comes out of the pods, he brushes past the awaiting crowd. Pidhe’s excited grin melts away, and Hunk’s happy demeanor disappears. Lance simply steps away with a pout.

Keith follows after him, expecting him to stumble into the kitchen or even the hangar, but instead he disappears into his room, ignoring Keith trailing behind him. As the door slides shut and locks behind him, Keith hears him mutter a single word. “Kuro.”

He hides in there for a week. A solid week of Hunk leaving food outside of his door. A week of Keith making sure he actually eats it. A week of total silence. And then Keith finally drags him out.

He stumbles onto the bridge with his hair cut much too short, his fluff of white hair sticking up at the wrong angle, and his face shaven clean. He weara a short sleeved shirt that shows more skin than he’s been willing to for a long time.

He looks…wrong.

Keith tries to push the feeling away. He should be happy. He should be glad. But instead he just feels wrong. Out of place. He stands beside him.

“Glad to have you back.”

Shiro grins. “Glad to be back.”

When Keith turns away, when Shiro doesn’t think he can hear him anymore, he says it again, that word.

“Kuro. Kuro. Kuro.”

It connects finally. He knows that word, remembers what it means. Black, in Japanese, his first language. The opposite of white, of Shiro himself. It seems fitting for this Shiro, this new person who doesn’t seem at all like the man he’d fallen in love with.

 

 


End file.
